


Dragons of John

by quietlyintoemptyspaces



Series: I have commitment issues (but I shared anyway) [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dragons, Gen, Mental connection, Sherlock is a Dragon, Unfinished
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 20:48:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3951220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietlyintoemptyspaces/pseuds/quietlyintoemptyspaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Where’s the head?” The only response he’d got was a blank stare. “There are supposed to be fingers in the crispers.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“What are you talking about John?” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“The skull is gone too.” He let the door close and turned to his dad. “They’re experiments. I had a dream about them. I was expecting them to be in our fridge too because the boy in my dream said that he’d share them with me if I was his friend.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dragons of John

**Author's Note:**

> http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/16422.html?thread=98444582#t98444582
> 
> I tried to link it, but there is NO technology cooperating with me today.
> 
> Inspired by the above prompt.

John remembers the tales from his childhood, about giant lizards that can turn into men and kidnap beautiful maidens and hoard treasures in cold, dark caves. He also knows that they were more than just stories, but things handed down through the generations, like his granddads silver pocket watch or the fine ivory ring that every female in his family has worn at one point or another. 

 

When he was pre-med, he remembers hearing about fantastical if somewhat blasphemous ideas about these great beasts being the cure-all to end all ills. Unfounded, all of it, because there were no more dragons. 

 

“Dragons,” John scoffs, only half hysterical. “What’s all this talk of dragons?” 

 

The American across from him swallows a mouthful of beer and glances him over like he might be a loon. But John’s not the one talking about mythical beasts. It’s just after his first tour, he’s on leave, and he was hoping there’d be no talk of this. “There’s news back home that they might not be all dead. Some doctors or something seem to think there are a few left that have blended in so well with people that there’s hardly a difference anymore. Except, you know, that they can change into monsters and eat us.” 

 

There’s more talk when he goes back to Afghanistan but he does his best to ignore it. It’s easy being a soldier when it’s in his blood and it’s easy to ignore Harry’s letters when he’s in the middle of a warzone. 

 

In his third tour, bunkered down in a ditch with a younger fellow who’s holding his gun like a security blanket and another who’s fading fast, he’s expecting little speech, if any at all, but what comes is, “There’s dragons out there,” from the man who won’t stop bleeding, repeated seven minutes later by the other one. 

 

The next time, John snaps with irritation and anger. “There are no dragons,” he says. “They’re extinct, dead, no more. The last one died twenty-three years ago.” 

 

The kid looks at him with round eyes in something akin to terror and the other stops breathing. There’s no reason for a man like him to have information like that. Unless he was there, he’s not supposed to know. 

 

Some two hours later, when the darkness has just settled and the gunplay is paused for a moment, there is a squeak and a shift of the body next to him. “Where you there?” He should have been expecting this. 

 

“No,” he lies, and then, “But my father was.” Which is the truth, and his father is still there. 

 

When he gets shot, he is left to wait for two days before he gets taken to a medic and then it’s another day’s wait for the retrieval of the bullet. By the time they finally get to him, he has a fever and can barely lift his arm. He dreams with the drugs they give him, the lucid dreams he’d had as a boy that would make his father cry because he’d ask questions that didn’t have answers. 

 

Once, at three in the morning, his father had found him in the kitchen, standing in the glow of the fridge, frowning like something wasn’t there that was supposed to be there. “Where’s the head?” The only response he’d got was a blank stare. “There are supposed to be fingers in the crispers.”

 

“What are you talking about John?” 

 

“The skull is gone too.” He let the door close and turned to his dad. “They’re experiments. I had a dream about them. I was expecting them to be in our fridge too because the boy in my dream said that he’d share them with me if I was his friend.” 

 

It was the first time he’d seen his father cry. For the next year he’d barely been home. When asked where he was, “Work,” was all he said. John had followed him once. Only once because it was the last time he saw his father alive. At the time, though, he’d been more entranced by the great scaled beast than worried for the man in the line of fire trying to save him. 

 

When the nurse comes in to check his IV and to make sure the fever hasn’t caused any lasting damage, he probably shouldn’t ask about the severed head in the fridge and what to put it in without changing the end results. He does anyway though and then wants to bite his tongue because if they weren’t going to send him home before, they definitely are now. 

 

The limp, he’s sure, develops as much from lack of excitement as it does from indecision over his father’s death, but the therapist assures him it’s all in his head; psychosomatic, she says, like that makes it somehow not real.

 

He doesn’t read the paper when he gets home, doesn’t bother because news suddenly doesn’t seem as important as it did before he’d gone off to war.


End file.
